Duncton Found (43 page)

“Most may now espouse the Stone yet all were taught the Word when young. No, no, the Stone is but one way, and a community, whatever faith it has, will accept all others to its heart even if
they
believe
their
way is the only one. Aye, even then. A heart is changed by example not by words. How can an example be known if it is not experienced and shared? By opening itself to others always and for all time a community exemplifies itself to others. Thereby as well it grows and changes all the time, as a set of tunnels changes with each new occupant. How great the noise he makes! How little the change he truly makes! But give him no freedom and send him away, then how dead those tunnels will soon be!

“Some say that the great tunnels of Uffington were destroyed by the grikes. But I, who was there, and who was taught by Boswell himself, say this: Uffington had died long before that. So had Duncton. So, I believe, has Whern.”

Tryfan was silent for a time and the moles stared at him, and at each other, and muttered among themselves or were silent, according to their understanding and interest in what he was saying. He moved forward a little, perhaps to bring their attention once more to the text he had scribed.

“But, of course, a community is only as good as the individuals of which it is made, and they are fallible. They
are
fallible.

“I was reared in this system by Rebecca, and by my father Bracken. They were near the end of their lives when I was born and I now think I gained by that, though before this summer I had not thought much of it at all. Indeed, I did not think of such things until Feverfew came among us by the light of the Stone Mole’s star and gave birth to Beechen, who was sent to us by Boswell.

“So Beechen, too, had a mother, as I had, who was older, and though I am not his father it was that responsibility I took. This summer you have shared that responsibility as well, and in your different ways given much to Beechen.

“What you gave to him he has shared with me and so helped me understand much that I did not before and so enabled me to scribe a Rule. This text you see here is that Rule, and each of you has helped make it, each one of you.”

Tryfan said these last few words slowly, staring around at the moles, and then back at the text.

“I said a community is only as good as its members, and this is so for ours as well. We are, most of us, old now, and all near our time. Many who saw Beechen’s birth are no longer with us. Many here will not survive to Longest Night. I think a time of change is coming to us once again and that our community is imperilled as it often has been in the past. In its present form it may soon die. Oh yes, it may. Whatmole here has not sensed the darkness coming? Whatmole did not shudder when he heard of what happened to Marram and Sorrel at the cross-under?

“So now, our Rule. Well, such a thing is nothing new, Uffington lived by one for many centuries, which helped the scribemoles conduct their lives of learning and worship, but it was large and complex. I believe that Whern has a Rule as well, though it is secret and unspoken, and in the paws of the Master or Mistress of that place, and a group of elders which they call the Keepers.

“The Dunbar moles, living in the Wen, had a Rule as well, scribed by the great Dunbar himself, and it is one I know. I kenned it in the Wen, and when we came back here Spindle copied it down from memory. I have referred to it often in making this Rule and have been much struck by the many wisdoms you have shared with Beechen this summer which Dunbar also knew.

“But in one important way is our Rule different from his. His was written for the Stone, whose rituals and liturgies help make up its form. A mole might think that the Dunbar moles appointed the Stone as leader instead of a mole, but a leader just the same. That community died. Moles forgot to think for themselves. Our Rule assumes the Stone wishes each one of us to be himself before it, not a pretence of what he ought to be.

“Nor does our Rule desire moles to be any more humble or reverent before the Stone than they would be towards themselves and each other. The Stone is what they are when they are part of a community striving to be its very best.

“As for such Rules as those of Uffington or Whern, the Rule we have made is very different because its purpose is different. It is to help individuals join community and keep their commitment to it, and bring themselves nearer to it. It is not a set of rules to be used in judgement if they are transgressed.

“From this you may guess that our Rule is positive. It is as my mother Rebecca was: positive. She was what Dunbar would have called ‘a mole of the rising sun’. She preferred to lead a mole towards what he could do, rather than admonish him for what he could or had not done. Moles of the rising sun believe that moles so reared learn humbly to love themselves and so find their lives filled with daily wonder at what they are; such moles are at the very heart of true community.

“Then, too, our Rule is concerned with the reality that is now and here about us and not with a world of perfection yet to come. This is why lies and deceit do not help a mole but hinder him and the community in which he lives for they mask the reality all need to know.

“But to know reality, and see it plain, requires discipline, and that
is
hard. Again and again you have in different ways told Beechen that a mole’s life will be hard. Lying simply seeks to ease the pain.

“Our Rule helps a mole with that by showing that hard though the truth may be, hard though right vision may be, lies and obscurity are finally harder. They are a confusion a mole makes about himself and become ever harder to escape.

“Yet what of change? How do we escape from confusion? How do we learn to give all we are to the communities in which we live? The Word teaches that a mole must Atone for both what he has done wrong and what he has not done right before he is judged worthy. In short, the Word punishes mole for being mole and says that only through punishment and suffering can he be saved.

“Our Rule does not point a mole that way, and nor do I believe it is the Stone’s will that it should. Rather we say that as nomole is perfect so all moles will, to some degree, carry their confusion with them. That is their reality. But the way to help them escape it is not through punishing them, which merely confirms that a mole is wrong, but by teaching them that at any moment, any time, they can turn back towards the rising sun, which is the light of the Stone, and see that by reaching out towards it they can cast off their confusion in a moment. In a moment.

“This turning to reality – which may take years to come, or but a moment – is what the scribemoles of old called grace. But we have almost lost the word, for its meaning lies in wonder and belief and those we have almost lost. Grace is not a state that stays. As it comes it may go and a mole will not find it again unless with patience and with discipline he turns his snout towards the rising sun once more.

“Yet I know that many of you have been so graced here in Duncton, and often without trying, and without Atonement or austerity or punishment. You have turned a corner, seen the sun with truth, with your eyes open wide, and left your confusion behind you. How can this be, that the diseased and outcast have found grace, and in throwing off confusion have begun to find community? And more than that, though none of us is perfect and all of us slide back into confusion, how have we been able to give Beechen so much to take from here?

“This answer lies, too, in the Rule you have helped me scribe. Many of us came here angry, and full of dark purpose, and full of hatred. We loved not our neighbours, we trusted not our friends. We hurt others because we were hurt ourselves. So did this outcast community begin, and in its painful birth did many die. Yet, slowly, left alone with but the Silence of the Stone to heed and the wise cycle of the seasons to attend and listen to, which shows us daily what we creatures are and were and will become, which is not much unless it is seen for what it is, which is everything... we have each stopped striving for what we could not have. Some have stopped complaining, some have found the peace that lies in the simple burrow, some have found that by listening more they need say less; and many have learned to raise their snouts from their own miserable concerns and see the eastern sun rise each day and know the joy of it, and feel their own true worth.

“So, gradually, within ourselves and learning from one another, we have ceased to strive so hard for what we did not really need, and found how greatly wormful is the soil which the Stone has given us. Then, getting older, growing slower, striving even less, we have turned the corner and seen the sun.

“The Rule you helped me make tells much of this. Its way is finally not hard but only seems so when moles are lost in their own confusion. Yet how slowly do we learn not to be afraid of what we are, or ashamed, or sad. We
are,
as the rising sun
is,
and because the Stone knows us, and knows what we truly are, we can accept ourselves without deceit. There is great peace in that and it is the Stone’s great gift to us, and somewhere in the whole acceptance of it we shall discover Silence.

“All these things, and the way towards them, are in our Rule. We know them, we have learned them, and we have given them as best we can to Beechen. They are the simple things we know which the striving of our lives has made us too often forget.

“Moledom has forgotten them. And now its longest winter’s night is coming and it is ill-prepared. All our lives it has been coming, all our lives.

“Yet there is hope. As if it knew that such a time would come, our forebears, of which we are but the living part, made a myth of the Stone Mole, and said he would be a saviour. We thought he would be more than us, stronger, wiser, better, more powerful.

“But he has come and he is but ordinary mole. He is like us. Outcast here like us. Flesh and blood like us. Fallible like us. Afraid like us. Boswell, White Mole, bearer of the Seventh Stillstone which is of Silence, sent his son as Stone Mole and honoured Duncton with his rearing. For better and for worse we have done the best we can and now, on the eve of the long winter to come, we must do that which is the last thing of our Rule. We must trust ourselves to let him go.

“To make him free to leave us, to make him know we trust him to go forth, is the last and greatest gift we have. As in the nature of our welcome does our community grow stronger when new moles come, so in the nature of its farewell is that strength preserved. Our rite of Midsummer has helped prepare us for his parting, and him as well. Now must the parting be. It is a moment all moles who have pups must learn to face with the same trust with which they must learn to face the rising sun.

“Beechen is our youth, his is the light of the rising sun we saw, he is the love we gave without asking for any in return, he is the gift we give to others. As our communities gave to us so we gave on to him; and if, as I believe, he is the Stone Mole Boswell sent, then he will pass on the spirit of the Rule we made to allmole in its time of greatest need.

“His teachings, which are our wisdom, shall light moles through the great darkness. He is not more than us, but us ourselves. But as we are weak, so shall he be, and if our strength was not enough in him so then shall darkness prevail.

“I pray that we have done enough and that Boswell’s trust in us shall be fulfilled.

“As for this Rule, which is but a dull echo perhaps of what we have put in Beechen’s heart, it might with advantage be placed where the great scribe and cleric Spindle hid the texts we made when he was alive.

“If the Stone wills it, and moledom survives the deep winter of doubt and dark sound, others will one day find them. It was my brother Comfrey’s greatest wish that pups, or the pups of the pups, of those survivors who escaped Duncton Wood would one day return. I pray they will, and find this Rule, and ken it well, and having kenned it put it to one side and through living by its tenets discover things we knew.

“Where that place is I do not know, but Mayweed does. He shall choose a mole to take the Rule with him, that another knows as well.”

“Practical patriarch, I have chosen already!” said Mayweed with a grin. “Bailey is the mole.”

“But...” Bailey began to protest.

“Oh but ‘but’ Bailey
is I
Do we not all agree?” A rumble of good-humoured “Ayes” and “Yeses” and general affirmation greeted this. “The community decides, the Sirs and Madams acting all as one! Incredible. Tryfan’s optimism already proven justified. Relief!”

Tryfan smiled and held up his paw.

“But one more thing I shall say, and if I sound too much like a self-appointed leader then gainsay me at once. Let Beechen leave us tomorrow. Let good Mayweed guide him, and Sleekit go with them. With the Stone’s help they shall be enough to get him safely out of Duncton.

“We who remain shall have a new task now: to face with all the will at our command as a community the trials that lie ahead. Once before when the grikes came here I fled, and now I wish I had not. The whole burden of our Rule is that nomole gains by fleeing darkness.

“When I returned here with Spindle I told him that I would not leave again. Nor shall I now, though everything suggests that the grikes may soon be upon us once again. This shall be our task, our greatest task, perhaps, old though we are. We shall face the moles of the Word as if they were our returning kin. We shall not strike them. We shall not hurt them. We shall show them what we are, which is a community that strives for nothing other than what it can best make within itself of love and of the Stone.

“We shall feel fear. We may be hurt. We may well be killed. But if anymole here can tell us now a better way than just to be what we are when they come then I would know it.”

Nomole spoke, or said that Tryfan spoke anything other than what they felt, fearful though it was.

“Tomorrow then, at dawn, with the rising sun, we shall accompany Beechen to the south-east slopes and from there, going the dangerous way by the top of the roaring owl way, which Mayweed knows, he and Sleekit shall lead Beechen from us. After that the Stone will guide them all.”